


Parental Interference

by David_Ginsberg



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Antisemitism, Beverly Marsh Lives With Her Aunt, Beverly Marsh Stays in Derry, Derry (Stephen King), Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Gay conversion therapy (referenced), Gazebos, Good Parents Maggie & Wentworth Tozier, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Period-Typical Homophobia, Religious Fanaticism, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Stephen King Cameo, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 20
Words: 17,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25041772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/David_Ginsberg/pseuds/David_Ginsberg
Summary: In which Wentworth Tozier, DDS, becomes concerned about his son after hearing a rumor related to a demonic clown.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 69





	1. Not a Local

Wentworth’s third patient of the day was Henrietta Dumont, a client he wasn’t looking forward to. There was nothing the matter with her teeth, but she was one of his son Richie’s teachers, and took every appointment as an opportunity to complain about Richie’s ‘inappropriate’ sense of humor. He tried to prevent her from getting onto the subject by bringing up something he’d read in the paper.

“Pity about that Corcoran boy.” Eddie Corcoran had recently gone missing, by Wentworth’s count the third missing kid that month.

“Hmph. You know his father was a drunk.” Wentworth wasn’t sure that Mrs. Dumont was supposed to be sharing that information with him. In fact, he thought she probably should have shared it with the Welfare Office. “It always goes for the drunks’ children.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I forgot Dr. Tozier, you’re not a local.” This was true, Wentworth was originally from Lewiston and had opened up a practice in Derry after graduating from dental school. His roommate has been the son of the town’s previous dentist, but had no interest in coming back to Derry after graduation. The most recent edition of the Tufts alumni magazine had him running a charity clinic in Zaire.

“Not yet, I suppose.”

“Oh, well every 27 years on the dot, since the town of Derry was founded, there’s a spate of children who go missing and are never found again. Of course, most of them are children who’ll never be missed, like that Marsh girl your son hangs around.”

“Has she…?”

“Not yet. Of course, everybody has their own theory as to why. When I was a girl the older children used to tell us it was a demonic clown that lived in the sewers. I never was able to enjoy a circus.”

“Clown?” Wentworth knew that he should find the story amusing, but for some reason he didn’t find the idea as ludicrous as one might expect a 40-year-old dentist to.

When he’d finished with Mrs. Dumont, Wentworth told his secretary to cancel his afternoon appointments and drove to the apartment building where the Marshes lived. Neither Alvin nor his daughter were there, but Wentworth did see Leroy Hanlon on his weekly round of meat delivery.

“Uh, Mr. Hanlon,” he called out, “can I talk to you for a second?”

“What about?”

“Have you seen my son, Richie?”

“Why would I?” Leroy wasn’t very friendly to townspeople, although Wentworth could hardly blame him after what had happened to his son.

“I’ve been told he’s been spending a lot of time with Mike this summer.”

“I told him not to play with other kids, stay close to the farm. It’s not safe for him, not this summer.”

“Why this summer.”

“Come now, Dr. Tozier. You’ve lived here for 14 years and you mean to tell me that they haven’t told you the stories.”

“What stories? About the evil clown that lives in the sewers?”

“Well, some say it’s a clown, some say it’s a monster, and some say it takes the form of whatever you fear the most.”

“Well, right now what I’m afraid of most is never seeing my son again.”

“Me too.”

They took Leroy’s car, very fast, back to the farm, where Mike was nowhere to be seen. Leroy took a shotgun down from the mantle and loaded both barrels, then tossed the box of shells to Wentworth.

“They’ll be in the barrens.”

The barrens was a marshy wasteland where Derry’s sewer system discharged. After seeing no sign of the children above ground, Wentworth and Leroy descended into the sewer itself. Wentworth didn’t really want to think about what was in the water they were splashing through, but something told him his son was nearby. The hunch turned out to be correct, as Wentworth heard screaming.

He broke into a run, as his son’s voice echoed through the tunnels.

“Welcome to the Loser’s Club, asshole!”

The tunnel led into a single cavernous room piled with junk Wentworth didn’t take the time to notice. What he did notice was his son, Mike Hanlon, and a few other kids attacking a clown. Or at least, most of it was a clown – it’s face and arms seemed to mutate as it faced each child. It chased Mike with arms shaped like giant lobster claws until a child Wentworth didn’t recognize stabbed it, when its face turned into a mummy, with bandages reaching out to ensnare the child, then turning into some sort of leper spitting bile onto Eddie Kaspbrak. Kaspbrak kicked it over, and then it turned to face Bev Marsh.

At this point, it wasn’t a clown, or anything Wentworth would have expected a thirteen-year-old girl to be afraid of, but Alvin Marsh himself. He…whispered, in a voice that made Wentworth’s blood run cold.

"Promise me you'll always be my little girl."

Before Bev could react, Leroy fired the shotgun, hitting whatever it was in the shoulder. The thing whirled around to face the two adults.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here. I don’t meet many grown-ups. Would you like to see the clown show?”

The thing opened its mouth, and suddenly Wentworth wasn’t in the sewers anymore. Instead, he was following Richie and the Kaspbrak boy through the Derry carnival. But not this year’s carnival. They were both a few inches taller, and seemed older. Wentworth guessed about 16 or 17. They were holding hands, which made Wentworth nervous. He had always suspected that Riche was somehow different from other boys, and this confirmed his worst fears.

Richie had to be crazy, holding hands with another boy out in the open like that. Sure enough, Henry Bowers, the town bully, noticed them and made a smart remark. Instead of running away, or trying to deny it, Richie threw the remark back in his face.

“Michael Bolton called, he wants his hair back.”

Wentworth ran up to the Bowers kid and tried to pull him off Richie, but he couldn’t touch him. He was like a phantom – able to observe what happened, but not able to influence it in any way. It didn’t seem like Richie could even hear his screams. One of the bullies held Richie down while the other kicked Kaspbrak’s omnipresent inhaler away from him. Richie was just as helpless as his father, watching them kick Kaspbrak repeatedly in the face, and then tipped him over the bridge. Richie screamed and tried to get up, but the gang just threw him in after Eddie.

Wentworth ran up to the bridge and tried to jump in after Richie, but an invisible force held him back. All he could do was stand at the railing and call out Richie’s name.

And then he saw the clown again, standing at the riverbank and beckoning toward Richie. Richie swam toward it. This version of Richie didn’t appear to recognize the clown as something evil, or was too panicked to realize it.

Wentworth started to shout out a warning, but before he could form words, he felt himself falling. He landed with a thud back in the sewers. The children had surrounded the clown, which seemed to be gradually shrinking as they chanted at it.

“You’re just a fucking clown…a little boy…an imposter…” Finally, it shrunk to a size where Leroy Hanlon was able to reach into its body, pull out the heart, and with the nonchalance of a man who had spent his adult life slaughtering animals, crush it between his fingers.

For the first time, Wentworth noticed what was surrounding him. Bicycles and wagons; toy pistols and articles of children’s clothing. Whatever it was had been keeping _mementos._

Wentworth was suddenly snapped back to reality by his son’s voice.

“Dad! Dad! You’ve got to help Eddie. Daddy, please!”

Richie hadn’t called him daddy in years. Wentworth knew it had to be bad.

“Where is he, Richie?”

Richie led him to a part of the sewer where Eddie was lying on the ground. He’d been gored, and he was still breathing, but unconscious. Wentworth picked him up and carried him out of the sewer, followed by the kids, Bill Denbrough cradling his brother’s torn raincoat in his arms and Leroy bringing up the rear with the reloaded shotgun.


	2. In the Waiting Room

Maggie Tozier found her husband and son in the hospital waiting room. Richie had buried his face in his father’s jacket, which scared Maggie.

“What on Earth is going on?”

Richie looked up, tears streaming down his face.

“It got Eddie, Mom.”

“What got Eddie?”

Wentworth answered for his son, who had started sobbing again.

“I don’t know what it was. Whatever it was, it wasn’t natural.”

Maggie’s blood ran cold. “Went…”

“I think we need to talk to Father McClanahan.”

Father McClanahan showed up in the waiting room a few minutes later, along with Rabbi Uris, the Hanscom kid’s mother, and Mayor Devereaux, who seemed very eager to sweep the whole thing under the rug. He was clearly worried that a scandal would be bad for the tourism industry.

"After all, Went, look what happened to Chamberlain after that girl killed everyone at the prom. It's practically a ghost town now."

“Marty,” Wentworth asked an annoyed tone, “how long have you known about this thing?”

“Well, I mean, there were always rumors, but who would believe that a demonic clown…”

Don Uris’ eyes widened. “Did you say demonic clown?”

“What sort of powers did it have?” Father McClanahan asked.

“It could change shape,” Wentworth explained, “and I think it transported me into the future, or gave me a vision of the future, or a future. I don’t know.”

“The future depends on our actions in the present,” Father McClanahan responded. He seemed remarkably unperturbed by everything.

Don shot a venomous glare toward the mayor. “And the present depends on our actions, or _inactions,_ in the past.”

“And you’re sure it was a fully demonic entity, not a human who had been possessed.”

Leroy, who had been silent up until now, answered. “I’ve seen a lot of humans in my time, good, evil, and in-between. But that thing…that thing was never human.”

“Very well then, I’d better get in touch with the bishop.” 

Father McClanahan left, and Mayor Devereaux went off to intercept the Hanscom kid’s parents, who Wentworth had figured out were new to the area, and thus presumably would need more convincing to keep the whole incident quiet for Derry’s reputation. This left just him and Don Uris.

“So, Don. Are the Marshes your congregants by any chance?”

“No, I would have assumed they were Catholic.”

“I’ve never seen them at mass.” Of course, Wentworth wouldn’t have had a reason to look for them until now.

“Do you think they’re in need of pastoral counseling?”

“I don’t know if counseling is the term I’d use. That thing, whatever it was, it seemed like it was taking on the form of whatever the person facing it feared the most. Germs for Eddie; the vision it gave me was of something happening to Richie. With Beverly, it turned into her father.”

“Oh, dear.”

Wentworth and Rabbi Uris decided that the best thing to do would be to insinuate to Mayor Devereaux that they would be more cooperative about not going to the papers if a welfare investigation was opened into the Marsh family.

The police found Alvin Marsh on the floor of his bathroom, recuperating from a head injury that he admitted was caused by Beverly. That, combined with something off-putting about the way he described Beverly, gave them enough evidence to convince Alvin that everyone would be better off if Beverly went to live with her aunt in Portland.


	3. Eddie Wakes Up

Eddie Kaspbrak was sure that he’d died, and this was some sort of afterlife. He was bathed in bright white light and high-pitched drone whined in his ears. Gradually, however, the light resolved itself into the sterile whiteness of a hospital room, and the drone into the voice of his mother.

“How could you? After I _told_ you, after I _warned_ you.”

It all came flooding back to Eddie. Keeping him away from his friends, making him abandon them, making him think he was weak. How long had she been giving him the gazebos? Been lying to him. All so she could control him.

At that moment, Eddie decided that he was done with the gazebos, and he was done letting his mother push him around. She was oblivious, continuing to rattle off her list of recriminations.

“I don’t know why you’d want to hang around that nasty, dirty Tozier boy.”

“Because he makes my dick hard, ma. And I’m pretty sure it’s not because of the asthma that I can’t breathe.”

For once in her life, Sonia Kaspbrak was speechless. Her mouth just hung open limply.

“Oh, wait. I never had asthma in the first place, did I ma? It was all just a bunch of fucking gazebos! It was all bullshit!”

At this, all 480 pounds of Sonia Kaspbrak fell onto the floor in a dead faint. The resulting thud was loud enough to bring a nurse running.

When they’d finished getting his mother carted off to another room, the nurse noticed that Eddie was awake.

“How are we feeling?”

Eddie took stock. There was a dull ache in his torso, which he now realized was tightly bandaged, and his arm didn’t feel so hot either.

“Fine. Are my friends…” Eddie realized that he didn’t know if his friends had made it out of the sewer alive. He’d taken a claw or something to the gut, and been sure he was dying. He remembered Richie standing over him and crying, and he’d wanted to tell Richie how he’d really felt, but he’d chickened out at the last second, and made a joke about Richie’s mom right before everything went black.

_Fuck. What if Richie’s dead and I never get to tell him?_

“They went back home, sweetie. You’ve been out for a long while, and they needed to rest. I’ll see if your mother, er, I’ll call Dr. Tozier and see if they’re ready to come visit.


	4. Like Bubbie and Zaide

Stanley had suggested that they all go swimming at the quarry in an attempt to cheer up Richie and Bill. He had expected Bill to be upset. After all, he had just accepted that his brother was dead, and Stanley, an only child, couldn’t imagine what that felt like. He wasn’t expecting Richie to take Eddie being in the hospital so much harder than everyone else had. After all, they usually seemed not to get along, arguing more than Stanley’s Bubbe and Zaide.

_Oh, shit. Bubbe and Zaide. And Zaide always said girls used to pick on me because they thought I was cute, said I was going to be a lady’s man someday. Well, so much for that prediction._

He swam over to the bank, where Richie was sitting and looking forlorn.

“Hi, Rich.”

“Hi, Stan.”

“So, uh, what’s with you and Eddie?” It should have been obvious before now, from what the clown had said when it was pretending to be Dr. Tozier, and from the way Richie and Eddie always seemed closer than the other Losers. But in fairness to him, Stan was still getting used to the idea of Richie being gay, and he'd had alot on his mind lately.

“Nothing’s _with_ me and Eddie. I’m just pissed he’s fucking dying is all.”

“The doctor said he’s probably going to pull through.”

“Yeah, and last week the doctor would have said there _probably_ isn’t an evil clown hiding out in the fucking sewers.”

“Yeah…you’re right.”

“This town fucking sucks.”

Stanley couldn’t think of a response, so he just stared out at the road leading up to the quarry.

“Hey, isn’t that your mom’s car?”

Richie ran toward the Tozier family Wagoneer, clearly expecting the worst. His mother stopped before he could reach her and got out of the car.

“Eddie’s awake, he wants to see you kids.”

Richie’s mood changed in an instant. Pulling on his shorts over his wet briefs, Richie yelled for the others to “hurry the fuck up,” ignoring his mother’s protests over language. Once everyone had piled into the car, he urged her to drive faster until the pulled into the hospital parking lot, where Dr. Tozier was waiting for him.

As he sprinted after Richie down the hall, Stanley had a sudden thought that this could all go horribly wrong. If Eddie didn’t reciprocate Richie’s feelings, well, he would be exactly the type to freak out about it. Stanley was just about to subtly suggest that Richie save any discussion of feelings for when Eddie was a little stronger when Richie burst through the door and launched himself onto Eddie’s bed.

“Eds.”

“Yeah Rich?”

“You got me.”

“Huh?”

“With that joke about my mom. You got me good.”

“Oh…uh, actually I wanted to say something else, but I chickened out.”

“What was it. Wait, let me guess. ‘Richard Tozier is the most awesome kid in the entire universe…”

“Something like that, actually.”

“Wait, really?”

“I’m gay, 'Chie.”

“Me too.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Stanley saw Mrs. Tozier turn and walk away.

“Holy shit,” Ben muttered.

Eddie and Richie started kissing, and Stanley felt a little voyeuristic watching them, but he was afraid that if they looked up and everyone had left, they would interpret it as rejection.

Fortunately for Stanley and Ben, Eddie pulled away from the kiss after a couple of minutes.

“Richie, why are your pants wet?”

“Oh, you see, me and your mom were making out on the couch, and I must have really got her worked up, because she…”

“Oh, shit!”

“What?”

“I told my mom about you.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“I believe my exact words were ‘you make my dick hard.’”

“She’s going kill me, isn’t she.”

“Oh God, I know how she’s going to do it.” Eddie began laughing.

“How.”

“She’s going to sit on you.” Richie started laughing so hard he fell off the bed, and even Stan had to laugh as Eddie painted a mental picture of his mother crushing Richie under her bulk.

“The next time I do laundry, I’m going to have to pick pieces of your glasses out of her muumu.”

Neither Richie nor Eddie was able to say anything, until Eddie started having an asthma attack, and the nurse shooed the other kids out of his room.

Stan separated from the others and went to look for Mrs. Tozier. He found her crying in a stairwell.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

Mrs. Tozier looked up at him. “Is Richie with you?”

“I think he’s with Mike and Ben.”

“Good, I mean. I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t want him to see me like this.” Mrs. Tozier was trying to regain her composure, and her facial expression reminded Stan of his mother one night several years ago when someone (Stan was sure it was Henry Bowers) had graffitied their house with swastikas.

“I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s just that I don’t want him to think I’m angry at him.”

“You’re not?”

“No, not at him. People like him have a hard row to hoe in life, and that’s not what any mother wants for her son. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Stan was pretty sure he already did.


	5. A Rabbi's Son

Donald Uris was the first to admit that he had been busier than usual the past few weeks. Mayor Devereaux had decided that the best way to make sure that whatever had attacked the kids didn’t come back was to exorcise it from the sewers, so Donald had been on the phone with Kabbalah experts in New York, Warsaw, and Jerusalem.

The agreed-upon remedy required Donald and a minyan composed of rabbinical students of one of Donald’s old professors (he hadn’t wanted to expose any of his own congregants to danger, and Mayor Devereaux wanted to restrict knowledge of the event to as few Derry residents as possible) to descend into the creature’s lair under what had been the abandoned house on Neibolt Street, followed by Father McClanahan and a professional exorcist from the Vatican, Reverend Craig, a Professor King who was some sort of expert on supernatural activity in Maine, and a contingent from the Department of Defense. Father McClanahan had pumped a tanker-truck full of holy water into the sewers ahead of them, although that didn’t make Don feel any safer. On top of the demon itself, he had no idea what was in the water he was wading through, and if he dropped the Torah in it…

They managed to reach the lair without incident, and it was exactly as Wentworth had described it, stacked high with piles of artifacts stolen from the victims. Donald could hear camera shutters from one of the Defense Department officials clicking, and the strobe lights flashed against the walls of the sewer.

“Do you think we should try to take some of this stuff out?” He asked, “see if we can return it to the families?”

Father McClanahan shook his head “No, all this must burn. It could possess any of these artifacts.”

The Talmud held that demonic possession of inanimate objects was impossible, but Donald knew it would be futile to argue the point. Thanks to Derry’s demographics, Father McClanahan’s word carried a lot more weight with the city fathers than his did.

After the Vatican’s exorcist had said the Rite of Exorcism, Donald led the minyan in a circle around the edge of the lair, bearing the Torah aloft and reciting the 91st Psalm. Reverend Craig was the last of the clergy to attempt an exorcism, loudly rebuking the demon in the name of Jesus. When he’d finished, they ascended to the yard surrounding the hole where the house at 29 Neibolt Street had been, and watched as the guardsmen poured napalm into the hole. When the fire had burned out, Professor King dropped a small figurine of a turtle into the hole, and began talking to one of the Department of Defense contingent.

“Well, that ought to cover it.”

Donald wished he could be as sure as the mayor.

For the first time that week, Don was able to eat dinner at home with his wife and son. He was worried about Stanley, who’d been having nightmares ever since the incident.

“Dad,” Stanley asked, “what does the Torah say about homosexuals?”

Like any father would be, Donald was concerned about this question coming from his 13-year-old son, and looked to his wife for clarification.

Andrea whispered an explanation. “Richie and Eddie.”

“Ah,” this was a much easier question to answer. “Halachically, it’s forbidden of course, but the Noahide Law only directly addresses matters of incest.”

“Don…” Andrea prodded.

“It’s forbidden to Jews, but there’s no reason to be upset about a Gentile practicing it. It’s like failing to keep kosher or observe the Sabbath.”

“Oh.” Stanley looked relieved.

“Which is not to say,” Don continued, “that a rabbi’s son doesn’t need to be careful about who he’s seen with and the assumptions people make.” Don had already heard plenty about his son’s friendship with the Tozier boy, who was considered A Bad Influence by most parents in Derry even before Sonia Kaspbrak started informing anyone who would listen that he’d seduced her son. Don had never been thrilled about his son's friendship with Tozier, but he had never detected any sign that Stanley had been negatively influenced by the boy, at least until the bar mitzvah. In fact, Don had been secretly proud of his son (he would never tell Stanley this, lest he, like the son of the rabbi at Donald's childhood congregation, come to feel that his family's status placed him above the other children in the congregation, and grow prideful. That boy had come to a bad end). Stanley was the perfect son, always keeping himself and his bedroom clean, always reading each Torah passage three times to make sure he didn't forget it. Don's greatest fear was that the turbulence of adolescence would lead Stanley astray from the path he had set out on, would seduce him with the temptations of modernity and laxity.

“Richie came to my bar mitzvah.”

The last thing Don wanted to do was relitigate Stanley’s bar mitzvah, especially because after learning what had really been going on that summer, he’d have to admit that Stanley had been right about much of it. He decided to punt.

“We’ll discuss it later.”

Andrea brought it up that evening, after Don had sent Stanley upstairs to study his Torah before bed.

“You know it’s not easy for Stanley.”

Don had to admit that if he’d had the choice of where to raise his son, he would have picked somewhere less parochial than Derry. But a rabbi has a duty to go where he’s called, and besides, Don told himself that it would be good for Stan in the long run. He’d learn to stand up for himself, and for his people.

“I think it’s good for him to have friends that are so loyal. You can’t expect him to face down the entire world himself, not at his age.”

“I’m not against him having friends, Andrea. I just wish he’d find some that aren’t such…” Don couldn’t quite find the word he was looking for.

“Losers?”

“Huh?”

“That’s what they call themselves, you know. The Losers’ Club.”

“Where’d they come up with that name?”

“Because that’s what all the other children call them, Donald. Losers. It’s a shared experience for them.”

“It’s hardly the same thing!” Don objected.

“I know, but Stanley’s too young to understand those things. All he knows is that he’s an outsider, and so are Michael and Edward and Richie. If they can make things easier for him, I don’t think we should get in the way of that.”

“Alright, I won’t say anything. But it doesn’t get him out of studying his Torah.”

“Of course not, dear.”


	6. Auntie Erm

Ermentrude Flanders had always known that her sister’s husband was no good, but there was no talking to Elfrida once she’d made up her mind about something. Apparently Bev had inherited her mother’s fortitude, because the Welfare Office informed her that Alvin Marsh had taken a toilet seat to the side of the head.

Ermentrude tried to make conversation with Bev as they packed.

“Are you excited about moving to Portland.”

“Hm.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s just, I’ll miss my friends here.”

“The welfare office said you didn’t really have friends up here.”

“There were six guys…we got to be close over the summer. We’ve kind of…been through a lot together.”

“I see. Perhaps I ought to meet them.” Ermentrude didn’t particularly like the thought of Beverly and boys. Especially boys that were anything like her father. She didn’t want Beverly to turn out like her mother, who’d been so vibrant and strong before she’d let Alvin Marsh break her down.

“Well, Eddie’s still in the hospital, and Bill’s still getting over his brother dying.”

“You certainly have been through a lot. What are they like?”

“Let’s see. Ben’s a really sweet guy, but I think he’s afraid to let other boys see it. Mike’s a little guarded at first, but he’s very loyal once you get to know him. Richie’s the jokester of the group.”

“What kind of jokester?”

“I think…he has a hard time relating to other boys, and he makes inappropriate jokes to cover it up.”

“I used to know boys like that.” They had gotten on Erm’s nerves.

They fell silent for a few minutes, with Ermentrude not wanting to pry. Finally, Bev spoke up.

“Aunt Erm, um, my dad used to say that you, uh, liked girls.”

“Yes, dear.”

“What’s it like? When you’re older, I mean.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Richie and Eddie.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, they both realized it when Eddie got hurt.” Erm could tell that Beverly was holding back something from her, about what had happened in the sewers, but she didn’t pry. “The rest of the kids at school haven’t figured out about Eddie, yet. He’s sick a lot, so that’s what they notice about him. They’re going to figure it out this year, though. His mom’s going around telling the whole town.”

There was another long silence, this time broken by Ermentrude.

“What do you think about maybe me moving up here instead of you moving to Portland?”

“Really?”

“Well, I noticed a shop for rent on my way into town. And it seems like the market for bookstores is wide open here.”

Bev smiled. “That’d be cool.”


	7. Perfectly Normal

Eddie Kaspbrak made it out of the hospital with exactly one week left of summer vacation. It wasn’t all bad, though. The doctors had reviewed his medical records and concluded that the only medication he actually needed was an antidepressant for his "asthma," which was actually panic attacks. Although his mother had sternly informed him that he was never to see ‘that boy’ again, the shock seemed to have slowed her down, because Eddie found it easier than ever to dodge around her and escape the house.

They spent most of their time in the hideout. Ben had figured out where the Bradley gang’s old hideout was and fixed it up with some tables and chairs and a hammock where they could take turns reading magazines. Or the others could take turns and Eddie and Richie could argue about whose turn it was and end up squished on top of each other.

“You know,” a peeved Stan suggested, “You guys could just make out. You don’t have to pretend to be fighting anymore”

“You want a peep show, you’ve got to pay up,” Richie retorted, and Stan rolled his eyes.

Ben looked up from the medical book he’d checked out of the library. “Hey, Eddie, does it ever seem like your mom doesn’t feed you enough?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Does she ever choke you or hold a pillow over your face until you can’t breathe?”

“Wait, how did you know about the pillow?” Eddie tried to ignore the shocked look Mike was giving him.

“It’s right here in this textbook. You have the classic symptoms of Munchausen by Proxy.”

“Ben, I don’t have fucking Murkowski Biproxy. I told you, my mom’s just been giving me gazebos.”

“They’re called _placebos_ ,” Stan corrected him.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Ben explained, “Munchausen by Proxy is a clinical syndrome in which someone makes another person, usually a child, _seem_ ill so that they can get attention and validation as the child’s caretaker.”

“Wait,” Mike sounded horrified, “your mom tried to _smother_ you?”

“Attention and validation? Yeah, that sounds like my Mom.”

“But you’re her son.”

Eddie tried to reassure Mike. “I’m not worried too much about the smothering anymore. She’s pretty focused on the homosexuality now. She’s taking me to see some psychiatrist in Augusta next week.”

Richie looked up, nervously “You don’t think they’ll cure you, will they?”

Ben flipped through the pages of the book. “It says here that homosexuality is no longer classified as a mental disorder.”

“So it’s incurable?”

Ben shrugged “There’s nothing to be cured. As far as medical science is concerned, you guys are perfectly normal.”


	8. Annette

Annette Tozier had been given a very stern lecture by her parents about being “supportive” of Richie, and she had held off on actually making fun of him for fear of being grounded for homecoming, but she couldn’t help resenting the fact that he’d gone and made it the school’s biggest topic of conversation the year she started senior high school. The fact that it was _her_ brother who had the town up in arms about an invasion of homosexuals.

“Tozier’s brother sucks Kaspfag’s dick,” the graffiti in the bathroom stall read.

Annette was studying it when Brenda Arrowsmith came into the bathroom.

“Oh, hi, Annette.”

Annette stood so that she was blocking Brenda’s view of the graffiti. “Hi, Brenda.”

“So, Gresham’s having a party tonight. Think you can come?” Gresham Arnold was the captain of the JV basketball team, and unofficially the coolest boy in the sophomore class.

Annette tried not to sound too excited. “Definitely.”

That evening, she found herself on the couch with a plastic cup of beer in her hand and Gresham paying attention to her. Gresham Arnold! Paying attention to her, a new freshman! One thing led to another, and the next week she and Gresham had a date to see _Uncle Buck_ at the Aladdin. Annette thought that Richie would have enjoyed the movie more than she did, and even he would have said it was no _Spaceballs._ But the important thing was that she was with Gresham, and he even had his arm around her.

After the movie Gresham drove her home.

“You can come in if you want,” she suggested. “My parents are home, and we can talk for a while.”

“Is your brother home?”

“I guess so, why?”

“I don’t want him there looking at me…he gives me the creeps.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that.” Suddenly, Annette was worried that she was putting herself on thin ice. “I mean, he’s probably upstairs sucking face with that Kaspbrak kid, they’re _disgusting.”_

“I’ll bet. Well, see you at school Monday.”

Annette turned and walked into the house. Her parents and Ritchie were in the living room watching TV. The news anchor was interviewing Sonia Kaspbrak, newly minted co-chair of the Derry Legion of Decency. Richie was mimicking her in his Jabba the Hutt voice, or it might have been his Yoda voice. They sounded exactly the same to Annette.

“He’s a nasty, dirty boy. And he made my darling little Eddie…”

Maggie used Annette’s entrance as an excuse to turn off the television. “How was the movie, dear?”

Annette picked up an unsteady note in her mother’s voice. “Oh, it wasn’t the greatest, but I had a good time anyway.”

“How was _Gresham.”_ Richie asked in a taunting, sing-songy voice.

Annette had a retort about Eddie Kaspbrak ready to use, but she didn’t. It wasn’t so much that she was worried about getting in trouble, although homecoming was more important than ever now that there was a chance she’d be going with Gresham Arnold. She didn’t want to upset her parents. They seemed different since Richie had been outed, seemed scared. And they weren’t supposed to be scared. They were her parents; they were supposed to be there for her when _she_ was scared. Which a part of her, the part that she would never admit existed that loved her kid brother in spite of his inappropriate jokes, and annoying impressions, and incredibly bad fashion sense, and homosexual interference in her social life, was scared. So she didn’t want to upset them any more than they already were, and she wanted this whole mess to be over.

“Ugh, grow up Richie.”

Annette walked upstairs and closed her bedroom door. From downstairs, she heard the TV turn on again, but this time it was on something with a laugh track, not the news. Annette dressed for bed and lay awake, trying to dispel a vague feeling of guilt.

Richie’s bedroom was on the top floor of the house, directly above Annette’s. Her parent’s room was on the other side of the house, with a guest bedroom between them, so Annette was pretty sure that her parents couldn’t hear the stifled sobs coming from Richie’s room.


	9. A Friend of Dorothy's

It was the unanimous opinion of the popular girls at Derry Junior High School that Beverly Marsh was a dyke. How she had become one so suddenly when only last year she was fucking every boy in school, no one had ever explained to her. But they were sure she was a dyke. After all, she had cut her hair short, and it was definitely the dyke kind of short hair – not the Molly Ringwald kind. And her aunt was definitely a dyke – had a rainbow sticker pasted in the window of that shop she sold obscene literature out of. Even the name, A Friend of Dorothy’s, was alleged to be some sort of homosexual code. They were probably fucking each other, although the popular girls didn’t have any idea – would certainly never _admit_ to having any idea – how that worked.

Ironically, none of them had ever figured out the real reason her dad had left town, not that it had ever gone _that_ far. Some part of her had known that she would have to stop him before it did go that far, but it had taken the clown to give her the courage to. After that, nothing the other girls said could really bother her.

She worked after school in the aforementioned bookstore. She would have done it for free, but Aunt Erm had insisted on paying her minimum wage and given her a long lecture about knowing her worth. Aunt Erm gave Bev a lot of those lectures, but Bev knew she meant well.

As the school year wore on and the protestors from the Legion of Decency provided free publicity, the shop began to develop a clientele. A lot of them were students at the University of Maine, drawn to the store’s science fiction collection and the aura of hip rebellion that came with patronizing it. There were younger kids two – sixteen and seventeen-year-olds from Bangor and Haven and Dexter and Old Town who were old enough to drive but not old enough to risk parking on the street where someone might recognize their cars. Very occasionally a Derry student would nervously dart into the shop after a couple of laps around the block to work up their courage. And one day, Dr. Wentworth Tozier parked his cherry-red Porsche directly in front of the store and strode inside.

“So, Richie’s birthday is coming up and I’m looking for a gift. Do you have anything by that newspaper columnist he likes?”

“Dave Barry?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Sorry, we don’t stock him.”

“Right, uh…” Dr. Tozier waited until there were no other customers around, and then spoke to Bev in a low whisper. “Richie said that it got you in its lights.”

“Yeah.”

“Did it show you the future?”

“One future.”

“Were you guys…happy?”

“It made us forget Derry, and it seemed like we’d forgotten what we learned from fighting it. I married a guy who was just like my father, Eddie married a woman just like his mother, and…” Bev decided that Dr. Tozier didn’t need to know about Stan, “Mike was the only one who stayed in Derry, and the only one who remembered.”

“What about Richie?”

“He was a stand-up comedian. I think he was pretty good at it, but he and Eddie weren’t together, and I don’t think he ever told anyone.”

“Oh.” Dr. Tozier turned to leave.

“Dr. Tozier? I changed the timeline. In the future I saw, it killed Eddie when he thought he’d killed it. It tried to do the same thing down there in the sewers, but I was able to pull it off Eddie before it was too late. And we all know about Richie and Eddie now.”

“We certainly do.”

Aunt Erm interrupted them. “Bev, is this guy bothering you?” Aunt Erm had a thing about guys, especially adult guys, bothering Bev. She’d about ripped Mr. Keene’s head off when they went in to pick up a birth control prescription for Bev (just in case – and they were supposed to help with cramps). It had been a little embarrassing, but Mr. Keene didn’t say anything the next time Bev went in there by herself.

“No, this is Richie’s dad. We were just discussing last summer.” Aunt Erm had told Bev that she could tell her about things whenever she felt ready, which Bev was pretty sure had been intended to refer to her father, but was also interpreting to refer to what the Loser’s Club was referring to as ‘the incident.’

“I see, nice to meet you, Dr. Tozier. Your son’s a lovely boy.”

Dr. Tozier chuckled. “You’re the first adult who’s ever said that to me, Ms. Flanders.”

After work, Bev rode her bike out to the kissing bridge. Richie was hunched over the railing, tracing over the R+E carving with his fingers. He jumped up when he heard Bev pump the brakes.

“Jesus Christ!”

“It’s just me, Richie.”

“Yeah, but it could have been Bowers or somebody.”

“You know, you really shouldn’t be out here all alone.”

“I just wanted to…”

“I know, you think there’s a ‘B+B’ around here somewhere?”

“There’s probably two, the way Ben pines after you.”

Bev chose not to respond, instead going up to the carving and running her finger over the R.

“It’s exactly where I remember it.”

“Huh?”

“I saw you carving this, in the deadlights.”

“I thought you said we didn’t end up together?”

“You still liked him, you just didn’t work up the courage to tell him until it was too late.”

“Too late?”

“I saw Eddie die. Just like he almost did down there. That’s why I was able to stop it in time.”

“Thanks.”

“You liked Eddie before last summer, didn’t you?”

“I guess I’ve always liked him. I just didn’t figure out it was _that_ way until last year. And then I didn’t want to admit it.”

“But you knew. That’s why it turned into your dad.”

“I always knew I was weird somehow, but I didn’t connect it to liking guys until, well” he swerved into the British guy. “You see, Beverly my dear, when a young chap gets to a certain age, he starts experiencing sensations…”

“Ok, Rich, I don’t need to hear about your sensations.”

They were quiet for a minute, and Bev lit a cigarette.

“Light?” she offered one to Richie.

“Nah. Eds freaks out if he smells it on my breath.”

“Like, really freaks out or just being Eddie?”

“Really freaks out. His dad died of cancer, so that’s not just his mom talking.”

“I didn’t know.” Bev stubbed her cigarette out. “What happened to Mike’s parents?”

“They died in a fire. People said it was drugs, but that’s bullshit. They never did drugs. Never.”

Bev looked over at Richie. He was angry, seriously angry. “I believe you.”

“The Bowers’ family used to own a lot of farmland, but they were really shitty farmers. The Hanlons only owned a little bit of land, but they were really good at it. The bank foreclosed on the Bowers property in…I think it was ’82 or ’83. A few months later the old Bowers house burned down. Mike happened to be staying with his grandfather, but his parents were inside.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, you should have moved to Portland while you had the chance.”

“I was afraid I’d forget.”

“Huh?”

“In the deadlights…once we moved out of Derry, we forgot about everything. Pennywise, Derry.”

“Shit, I’d pay to forget that.”

“We forgot about each other.”

“I forgot about Eds?”

“Yeah. You remembered the first time we were all together again. I mean, your eyes lit up, but you couldn’t say anything. There was too much water under the bridge.”

“Great, so my only choices are to stay in Derry for the rest of my life or forget the love of my life exists.”

“But the future I saw didn’t actually happen,” Bev reminded him, “maybe the other stuff won’t happen either. Maybe we can stop it from fucking with or memories. Or maybe now that it’s gone it can’t fuck with our memories anyway.”

“How do we know it’s really gone?”

Bev didn’t really know the answer to that question, so she changed the subject to the local wildlife.

“You never used to see turtles around here.” A small one had crept up onto the bridge and was watching Bev and Ritchie as though it wanted to listen in on their conversation.

“Stan says the county brought a bunch of them in as some sort of habitat restoration. Supposedly, that flood was caused by vegetation clogging the sewers, and they’re supposed to eat it.”

Bev laughed. “What a load of bullshit.”

The turtle continued on its way.


	10. Ironies

There were two great ironies in the resurgence of the Derry Legion of Decency. First, now that she was occupied fighting the evil homosexuals who had stolen her precious Eddie-bear, Sonia Kaspbrak spent much less time fighting the actual Eddie. In fact, her treatment of him bordered on neglect, which Eddie still much preferred to her typical smothering.

Her first plan had been to take Eddie to a psychiatrist. She found one in Augusta who claimed he could cure Eddie with psychotherapy, but they only lasted ten minutes into one session. She stormed out, leading a grateful Eddie by the hand, when the doctor informed her that the source of Eddie’s problem was her “overbearing and domineering personality.” Instead of going shopping afterwards like they’d planned, the drove straight home, and Sonia sat down to watch her soaps while Eddie snuck out the window and went down to the hideout.

Bill was pleasantly surprised to see him. “I thought you were going to be in Augusta all day.”

“It only took him ten minutes to figure out what’s wrong with me. I’m gay because my mother’s a bitch.”

Richie, who was lying on the old couch while Mike took his turn in the hammock, frowned. “My mom’s not a bitch.” Eddie was surprised that Richie hadn’t made the obvious joke.

Eddie took his shoes off and settled in on top of Richie. Wherever Richie sat or lay down in the hideout, Eddie always sat on him. It was the most physically affectionate they could be, except for when they ditched the other Losers and ran off to the hideout or Ritchie’s bedroom and, slowly, and awkwardly, figured out sex.

“She must have not hugged you enough or something. Or, like, your dad didn’t belt you enough.” In fact, Richie’s dad didn’t belt him at all, which probably explained a good portion of his personality.

“That has nothing to do with it,” Ben objected. “I looked up that psychologist. He’s a total fraud. They keep catching the people he claims to have cured coming out of The Falcon.” The Falcon was a gay bar out by the bus terminal that both Eddie and Richie were fascinated by.

Eddie realized that Ben was getting upset and changed the subject.

They all went back to their respective houses once it got dark. It was getting late enough in the year that the nights were cold, and of the Losers only Eddie and Bill would rather put up with the cold than go back home.

Richie and Eddie walked their bikes back, a little behind the others.

“If that guy could cure you,” Richie asked, “would you want to be cured?”

Eddie knew that the answer should have been _yes._ A cured Eddie wouldn’t have people slamming him into lockers and yelling “Kaspfag” at him, wouldn’t spend nights lying awake in his room worrying about AIDS, wouldn’t have his mother going all over town screaming about his sex life, wouldn’t have her telling him how _upset_ and _disappointed_ his poor father was up in heaven to see his little Eddie-bear doing god knows what with that _nasty_ Tozier boy. But a cured Eddie wouldn’t have that nasty Tozier boy, either.

“I don’t know. Maybe, if like, we could go to a parallel dimension or something where I was normal and you were a girl.”

Richie laughed. “Eds, I’d make a terrible girl.”

“Yeah, you’d show up to school in those glasses and a Hawaiian shirt and wonder why no one asked you to prom.”

“And everybody’d think I was a slut because I’d go around telling people I’d fucked their dads.”

Eddie cackled. “You’d cause so many divorces.”

When Eddie got home, he discovered the second great irony. For all the effort Mayor Devereaux and the city fathers had spent keeping Dr. Tozier, Rabbi Uris, the other parents, and the Department of Defense from telling the general public about Pennywise, it was Reverend Craig they should have been worried about.

At first, Eddie didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Yes, dinner tasted a little odd, but his mother had never been known for her cooking. After dinner, however, he began to feel extremely tired. So tired that he didn’t even protest when his mother picked him up and put him to bed.

He awoke in the sanctuary of Grace Baptist Church. It took him a minute to get his bearings, but eventually he realized that Reverend Craig was narrating what he’d seen in the sewers. Behind Eddie was a slide show with pictures that Reverend Craig had surreptitiously taken in Pennywise’s lair.

In front of him, Eddie saw the congregation of the church, his mother, and a camera crew from Channel 2. Reverend Craig was preaching for the cameras.

“And that devil lured this poor child down there, and it possessed him with a demon of homosexuality.”

The crowd groaned and Mrs. Kaspbrak began weeping. The camera panned over to her

Eddie realized that his mother must have gone to Reverend Craig when the psychologist didn’t work out, and he had supplied her with an explanation that absolved her of all blame for her son’s condition.

Reverend Craig addressed Eddie, or rather, the demon that was supposedly inside him.

“I rebuke you, homosexual demon, in the name of Christ Jesus.”

Eddie wasn’t sure what Reverend Craig expected, but nothing happened. After a pause he started up again. “I command you to come out of this boy.”

Eddie’s mom crawled toward him on her knees. “Speak to me, Eddie-bear. I know you’re still in there. I know my Eddie’s in there. Mommy loves you, Eddie-bear.”

Eddie looked down, avoiding his mother’s gaze. It was in that moment that he realized she had never loved the real Eddie Kaspbrak. What she loved was ‘her Eddie,’ a phantom creation of her mind. The real Eddie Kaspbrak, the Eddie Kaspbrak who used foul language and watched violent television and was in love with Richie Tozier, had never been anything more than an obstacle to her enactment of the fantasy.

Eddie felt hot tears streaming down his face. From then on, he would never eat any food that his mother offered him.


	11. Voices

The public revelation of Pennywise created a major scandal. There were front-page articles in the _Boston Globe,_ a special edition of _Nightline,_ and a Dave Barry column arguing that ‘demonic sewer clowns’ would be a good name for a rock band that Richie Tozier cut out of the newspaper and tacked above the desk in his room. With all the reporters crawling around, the rest of Penobscot County got its dirty laundry aired out too. There was the mysterious bombing in Castle Rock two years before, right after the selectman had murdered his wife, and right before that creepy pawn shop owner left town. And the arson incident in Jerusalem’s Lot back in the 70s – now they were saying it had something to do with vampires. And you didn’t even want to get started on Ludlow.

There were also repercussions closer to home. Parents, especially those who had moved into Derry not suspecting that a child-eating supernatural entity lived in the area, were upset at the apparent lack of interest in combating Pennywise on the part of the authorities. They paid good tax money for a police force, so it didn’t make sense to them that the only people interested in protecting their children were no more than children themselves. And of all children, Trashmouth Tozier, the Hanlon’s kid (not that they approved of what happened to his parents, but if they’d known their place, it wouldn’t have), a fat kid who’d just moved into town with his single mother, Sonia Kaspbrak’s hypochondriac little brat, the boy who’d stuttered his way through the third grade production of Romeo and Juliet and dragged it out 30 minutes longer than it needed to be, the son of that rabbi who bitched about the city hall creche every year, and that Marsh hussy who’s mother’d hung herself?

Of course, there were some voices, very soft at first, who whispered that if these particular children had saved the lives of uncounted Derry youth, it would behoove the town to go easy on their various eccentricities in exchange. There were even vague suggestions that what Trashmouth Tozier and the Kaspbrak boy got up to with each other didn’t _really_ threaten the morals of anybody else in Derry. It didn’t help matters that Reverend Craig’s claims of demonic interference started to seem a little silly when the threatened plague of sodomy failed to spread. After all, making only one child homosexual seemed like quite a step down from eating them by the dozen; and hadn’t the Kaspbrak boy _always_ seemed a little effeminate with his fanny packs full of pills and his oh-so-neatly-combed hair?

The voices gradually grew louder and more confident as 1989 rolled to a close, and one of them found its way into Annette Tozier’s mouth at the last high school party before Christmas break. Brenda, who resented Annette for dating Gresham, was trying to remind Gresham of Annette’s embarrassing family connections.

“I don’t know how you can stand sharing a house with that little faggot.”

Annette had had a few beers, which she wasn’t used to yet, and they emboldened her.

“I don’t mind it at all, Brenda. In fact, I’m somewhat grateful to Richie for killing that sewer clown. And you should be too. Isn’t your little sister the same age as Georgie Denbrough?”

Brenda’s eyes widened. “Grateful? to a little…”

Annette felt her face flush as four months of slights and insults that she had made herself ignore at the time rose to the surface. She was making a scene now, but she was past the point of caring.

“I’m sorry Brenda, does what my brother does with his penis effect you in any way? Or are you just jealous of him? Is that the problem? Do you want a little of Eddie Kaspbrak for yourself? Does he turn you on when he sticks that inhaler in his mouth? Because if he does, I can make some introductions.”

Annette ended up walking home alone through the snow, and Gresham called the next day to officially break up with her. She would be eating lunch by herself for the last week of the semester, but she slept much more soundly.


	12. Merry Christmas

Maggie Tozier decided that she was going to invite everyone over for Christmas to make sure all the kids enjoyed themselves. It meant a lot of extra cooking, but she could prep some things the night before, since they wouldn’t be going to midnight mass this year. They wouldn’t be going to mass ever again, unless the Church took back what it’d said about Richie.

“Intrinsically disordered,” was how Father McClanahan had phrased it, discreetly taking her aside to hand her a brochure for some clinic in Encino that was supposed to help Richie “overcome the factors in his life that led to same-sex attraction.” Maggie had read the brochure in the car and then ripped it into tiny, tiny pieces so that Richie didn’t see it. Her son may have been disorder _ly_ , but he was not disordered. Anyone who saw him with Eddie, really saw them, would know that.

There had been a few occasions when Maggie had opened the door to her son’s bedroom on a weekend to find Eddie curled up in bed with him. She would really have preferred for Richie to wait a few years before doing _that,_ but they looked so peaceful together, and she knew the alternative was Eddie alone in that house, with _that_ woman, so she quietly closed the door and went downstairs and made a lot of noise in the kitchen and pretended that Eddie wasn’t making a lot of noise when he jumped from Richie’s window to the second-floor landing.

Eddie was nowhere to be found on Christmas morning itself, so Maggie shook her son awake, remembering when he used to storm down the hallway and jump on his parents’ bed to wake them up and see what Santa had brought. Thirteen-year-old Richie blinked groggily and muttered “five more minutes?”

“You need to get dressed. Your friends will be over soon.”

Bev and Erm were the first to arrive, and Maggie poured Erm coffee while the kids exchanged the little trinkets they’d gotten each other with their allowances. Maggie’d wanted to talk with Erm sometime when Richie wasn’t around. She seemed like she had this whole being gay thing figured out, so she was the best person for Maggie to get advice from about Richie.

Before Maggie could broach the subject, the Denbroughs showed up. They had smiles plastered onto their faces, but Maggie could tell they were dying inside. You’re supposed to tell someone like that you can’t imagine what they’re going through, but Maggie had been imagining it on the many nights she lay awake worrying about Richie. Bad things happened to boys like Richie, and not just from supernatural causes. It seemed like every time Maggie turned on the news there was another story about AIDS or some kid turning up dead and the judge saying they’d asked for it. Or maybe they’d always been there and Maggie just hadn’t noticed before. And there was a boy in Maggie’s hometown who the bigger boys used to tease, just like they’d teased Richie. The official story was that he’d shot himself by accident cleaning his father’s gun, but he’d always been such a careful boy that no one believed it. Careful and fastidious and always neatly dressed. Sometimes Stanley Uris reminded Maggie of him.

For the time being, Maggie and Went made small talk with Erm and the Denbroughs and Ben’s mother on the porch while the kids played in the snow. They were laughing and carefree like children ought to be, and Maggie relaxed until the church bells rang out one. Eddie had said he’d be over at noon.

Richie separated from the group and ran over to the adults, trying to disguise the worry on his face.

“Has Eddie called?”

“No, sweetie. I’m sure he’s on his way.” She was not sure, and she knew that Richie knew, but he didn’t make a fuss over it.

Eddie finally showed up around 2:30, noticeably underdressed for the weather.

“Eddie,” Maggie asked, “what happened to your coat and hat?”

“Ma hid them,” he answered, as though hiding your child’s clothes to keep him from running away was perfectly normal. Maggie wished to God she’d gone to the welfare office earlier, right after the incident when Devereaux was tripping all over himself trying to keep people happy so they wouldn’t rat him out. But she hadn’t realized how bad it was until after the incident had made the news. She’d caught Richie sneaking food out of the house, and when she interrogated him, he broke down in tears and admitted that Eddie had stopped eating the food his mother cooked for him (when she bothered to cook) after she’d drugged him and dragged him to some sort of exorcism. Once he’d got started he told Maggie everything, how she’d told Eddie he had diseases he really didn’t, how she’d hit him just to make bruises she could show the doctors. Maggie had told him that everything was going to be okay, that he had done the right thing by telling a grown-up and that she was going to tell the police and they were going to find Eddie a new family and get everything sorted out. As soon as Richie calmed down, she had driven to city hall and told the caseworker on duty that she wanted to file a child abuse report. The caseworker had dutifully taken down her information but stopped when she said the name ‘Sonia Kaspbrak’ and informed Maggie that she could file a report but nothing would come of it because with all the fuss over the murders Mayor Devereaux needed the Legion of Decency for his reelection. When she’d told Richie, he’d screamed at her that she was a liar and locked the door to his bedroom for six hours.

“Let me see if we can find some of Richie’s clothes that fit you.” Richie’s winter clothes from last year were a little baggy on Eddie, but they would do.

When he’d finished changing, Eddie went downstairs and shyly handed Richie his present, a CD of David Bowie’s album _Heroes_. Richie had been listening to a lot of David Bowie lately. Maggie wasn’t sure if it was related to him being gay, but she was certainly glad for a break from the heavy metal he’d been listening to. Richie laughed when he opened it, and Eddie’s face fell.

“You don’t like it?”

“No, I love it, just…just open mine, okay?”

Eddie tore open the wrapping paper to discover the exact same CD. They put it on the stereo in the living room that night and danced badly until Maggie shooed them upstairs.


	13. Compelled

Sabbath services were always torture for Stan. For some reason, he would get this overpowering urge to jump up and throw the Torah scroll to the ground, or shout blasphemies so the whole congregation could hear. The only way to stop himself was to pray the Ashamnu silently to himself until the urge passed:

_I have trespassed; I have dealt treacherously; I have robbed; I have spoken slander; I have acted perversely; I have done wrong; I have acted presumptuously; I have done violence; I have practiced deceit; I have counseled evil; I have spoken falsehood; I have scoffed; I have revolted; I have blasphemed; I have rebelled; I have committed iniquity; I have transgressed; I have oppressed; I have been stiff necked; I have acted wickedly; I have dealt corruptly; I have committed abomination; I have gone astray; I have led others astray…I have trespassed; I have dealt treacherously; I have robbed; I have spoken…_

It seemed like it had gotten worse since summer. He supposed it was either God’s punishment for the outburst during his bar mitzvah, or that Pennywise had survived after all and was tempting him. Either way, he was exhausted by the time the service ended. He wanted to get away from his parents, so he wandered over to the hideout, even though the early March snowmelt made it an unpleasantly muddy slog. He was expecting the hideout to be empty, but was surprised to find…

“Eddie? How long have you been here?”

“Since I got home from school yesterday.”

“You slept here? Eddie, it was freezing last night.”

“You’re telling me. There was a strange car parked outside our house, and I overheard my mother talking to Craig last week. There’s some place in Texas. It’s like those places they send kids on drugs, only for gays.”

“Shit, why didn’t you just go to Richie’s?”

“That’s the first place they’d look. Look, can you talk to him and tell him I’m all right.”

“Ok.” Stan closed the hatch and tramped back towards town. Dr. Tozier opened the door.

“Hello, Stanley. Say, you haven’t seen Eddie around, have you?”

“Uh…no, Dr. T.” Stan hated to lie, especially on the Sabbath, but Dr. Tozier was an adult, and Stanley assumed that he would be bound by adult mores to turn Eddie over to his rightful parent as soon as he found him.

“Well if you do see him, tell him his mother’s looking for him, and she’s got Reverend Craig and a bunch of rough-looking characters with Southern accents with her. If I were him, I would just _curl up with a good book_ until all this is over.”

“Will do, Dr. T. Is Richie home?”

Dr. Tozier called upstairs to his son, and a confused Richie left with Stan.

“Do you want to tell me what the fuck is going on? Who were those guys with Jabba and the preacher?”

“I’ll explain when we get out of town.” When they’d reached the barrens, Stan looked around to make sure no one had followed them and whispered to Richie. “Mrs. Kaspbrak wants to send Richie to some sort of scared straight program in Texas, and those goons she was with were to keep him from running away. Your dad wants us to take him to Aunt Erm’s bookstore.”

“We’d better wait until it gets dark. I think the police were looking for him.”

When they got to the hideout, Richie stayed with Eddie, and Stan went to Ben’s house. Eddie had written down the name of the facility for Ben to research, so he and Stan looked for references in local newspapers until the library closed. They went back to the hideout, and the four of them walked into town with studied nonchalance, Eddie wearing a jacket of Ben’s with the hood pulled low over his face.

Erm was waiting for them at the back door of A Friend of Dorothy’s. “I’ve set up a cot for you upstairs and ordered takeout. I hope you like lo mein.”

Eddie suddenly realized that he hadn’t eaten anything, except for some skittles Richie happened to have forgotten in his pocket, in over 24 hours.

“Right now anything sounds good, Ms. Flanders.”

“You can stay here for a few days while we figure things out. I have some friends in Portland who can help if you need to leave town.”

The friends in Portland turned out to be unnecessary. Maggie Tozier solved the problem by marching down to St. Genesius’ Catholic Church just as the 11:00 mass was letting out. She knew that with the election heating up, Mayor Devereaux would be sure to be seen there. In fact, he was standing next to Father McClanahan, gladhanding parishioners as they exited the church.

Father McClanahan noticed Maggie first.

“Maggie, I haven’t seen you at Mass lately.”

“And you won’t be seeing me again.”

“Er, perhaps we could discuss this in private.”

“No, actually it’s Marty I want to talk to.”

Marty fixed her with an ingratiating smile. “Always glad to help out a constituent.”

“Great, then you can help out this constituent by informing Sonia Kaspbrak that her son will not be going to that _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_ ‘camp’ she wants to drag him off to, and that if at any point between now and his 18th birthday I am unable to contact him or ascertain his whereabouts for 24 hours the _Derry Examiner,_ the _Boston Globe,_ and the Maine Department of Social Services will all receive a copy of the child abuse report I swore out in September along with a list of people they might want to interview to find out why the report was never acted on. And while you’re at it, you can tell Chief Rademacher to call off that police car that’s been circling our block since Friday evening.”

Mayor Devereaux’s smile froze on his face as Maggie turned to Edna Whitaker, who was next in line to shake the priest’s hand. “Oh, hello Edna. That shortcake you brought to the Junior League Thursday was just _delightful._ You must give me the recipe sometime so I can make it for Went…”


	14. The Talk

Erm decided to leave the cot set up in the attic of her store, even though Eddie wouldn’t be needing it. Her friends in Portland would send kids to her that they’d picked up on the streets. Most of them were either in Portland from small towns in Maine, with plans to make their way to New York or San Francisco, or they had come from Boston or Manchester with no idea of where to go at all. Erm insisted that they call their parents and let them know they were ok, which nine times out of ten led to a tearful reconciliation in the front room of the bookstore. Erm set the remaining one out of ten up with a job washing dishes at The Falcon, or at one of the other local establishments whose owners had quietly confided in Erm that they thought all this Legion of Decency fuss was a transparent ploy to distract the voters from Mayor Devereaux’s failure of leadership regarding the clown attacks.

One such outcast was Adrian Mellon. He’d been kicked out of his parents’ house in Portsmouth on his 18th birthday and hitchhiked his way to Portland, where one of Erm’s friends found him staying at a shelter. Within a couple of months, he’d gotten a place of his own and proven himself reliable enough that Erm could trust him to run the store while she went out. Maggie Tozier had invited her over for coffee. If you had told a younger Ermentrude that she would ever find herself taking coffee at the home of the vice-president of the Junior League of Derry, a tastefully updated colonial with a well-manicured lawn and a carriage house in the back that had been converted to a dental practice, she would have laughed in your face. But here she was, sipping weak coffee from a mug that looked as though it was inherited from somebody and nibbling at a strawberry shortcake. She had come because she suspected that Mrs. Tozier wanted to talk about Richie, who was nowhere to be seen.

“Are the kids around?”

“Oh, no.” Maggie laughed a little artificially. “Annette’s got herself a new boyfriend, and Richie’s hardly ever home during the summer.”

“I guess the six of them are spending a lot of time together.”

“Richie and Eddie, especially. Erm, have you ever talked to Bev about, well, boys?”

Erm’s eyes narrowed, suspecting that this might have something to do with whatever Maggie had heard about Bev’s supposed promiscuity.

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, it’s just that Eddie’s been spending the night without them telling us and I don’t have the heart to tell him to go home.”

“I can’t blame you.”

“I just worry about them…not being careful.”

“You’re worried about AIDS.”

“AIDS and bullies.”

“AIDS is the easier of the two to stop. He just needs to always use a condom and talk to his partners about their previous experiences. I can give you some literature with more details. But I don’t think you need to worry too much. He and Eddie only have eyes for each other.”

“He could certainly do worse.”

“You’ve already done the most important thing you can do about the bullies, which is to be supportive. If it gets really bad, you could try calling the police, but I wouldn’t hold out too much hope.”

“Guess what Henry Bowers’ father does for a living.”

“I should have known.”

“Welcome to small town living.”

“What made you two decide to live in Derry, anyways?”

“Went’s roommate in dental school was due to inherit a practice, but he didn’t want to come back here. Turns out he was a kid the last time that clown showed up, which he never bothered to tell Went. To be honest Went’s talked about moving, but I don’t want to take Richie away from his support network.”

“It was the same with me and Bev.”

“Besides, I figure it would be just as bad anywhere else. Went just, he saw something in the sewers.”

“The shapeshifting?”

“No, it wasn’t quite that. Apparently, it can show you the future, or a possible version of the future. The Department of Defense spent hours talking to Went about it, I guess they think they can use it to predict whether the Soviet Union will break up or something. Anyway, he saw someone hurting Richie. He said it was during Derry Days, so I figure if we just arrange to be out of town we’ll be safe.”

They flew out to Phoenix the day before Derry Days officially started and saw the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and the Sonoran Desert. Richie sent Eddie a different postcard every day of the trip. Eddie slept over the night they got back, officially this time. The next morning, Maggie and Annette left early to go shopping, ostensibly to make up for dragging Annette away from her latest boyfriend for a week. This left Eddie and Richie alone in the house with Went. Neither of them seemed in a particular hurry to leave, which was fortunate, because it gave Went time to work up his courage. He went into Richie’s room, where the two boys were playing with Richie’s Nintendo, and cleared his throat.

“Your mother and I wanted to talk with you both, since, um, Eddie’s been spending a lot of time over here and we know you two are, uh, more than just friends.” Wentworth nervously shuffled the pamphlets Erm had given him, some of which were a little too heavily illustrated for his taste.

“It’s not that we think anything’s wrong with what we’re doing. We just want to make sure you’re taking the, uh, appropriate precautions.” He could tell that Richie and Eddie knew what he meant, because they were as red-faced as he was. “Your mother talked to Erm Flanders about, uh, relationships between men, and she suggested some…literature, that, uh, she thought we might want to discuss.”

Mercifully, Richie spoke up. “Eddie’s read that literature, haven’t you Eds?”

“Yeah, a couple…couple of times.”

“Oh, good. Then, um, just let me know if you have any questions, or, you know, want to talk about anything.”

“Will do, Dad.”


	15. Little Boy Blue and the Man in the Moon

Life for the Losers’ Club got a little easier with the transition to high school. Perhaps it was because Derry High had two feeder middle schools, and the kids from Ulmer didn’t really care about the cafeteria drama at Derry Junior High. Maybe it was the different dynamics of a larger school, or maybe that high school students were more willing to question the prejudices they’d imbibed from their parents. Whatever the cause, the Losers found themselves more or less ignored, rather than actively harassed. It was the six of them now, since Mr. Hanlon didn’t feel capable of homeschooling Mike at a high school level.

The Losers themselves were getting older. Ben had grown into his weight and was actually fairly muscular for his age, leading Richie to nickname him “Ahhhhhnald.” Stan seemed like he was becoming more distant from the others. He still sat with them at lunch, but didn’t say much, and preferred going home or birdwatching by himself after school to hanging out at the hideout or Richie’s house. The rest of the Losers’ Club assumed that Stan, who had always been the most mature of the group, was starting to outgrow their juvenile enthusiasms.

Bill and Bev were getting more serious, as were Richie and Eddie. Eddie was starting to rebel more consciously against his mother. He’d stopped slicking down his hair and used some of the money he’d earned to replace the clothes his mother bought him with flannel shirts and acid-washed jeans, and let Bev pierce his ear. His mother had tried to yank it out when she saw it, but he’d dodged her and locked the door to his room, so she settled for screaming at him through the walls.

It was the content of what she said that had him so upset the next day in school, but he didn’t want to tell Richie at first. Richie, however, had intuited that something was off and caught up with Eddie after school.

“Hey, you wanna hang out at my place?”

“Not today, Rich.”

“Come on man, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“I know something’s wrong, you’ve been acting pissy all day.”

“I’m not pissy.”

“Eds, I can’t apologize if you don’t tell me what I did wrong.”

“I’m not mad at _you.”_

“So, you are mad.”

“Mom doesn’t like the earring.”

“Wasn’t that sort of expected?”

“Dad wouldn’t have liked it either.”

Richie rolled his eyes. “How do you know that?”

“She may have mentioned it.”

“Fuck her.”

“I thought that was your job.”

“Nice, I’ll make a Trashmouth of you yet.”

“Seriously, I could have used you. She kept me up all fucking night.”

“Well, how about you stay the night at my house, alright?”

“Thanks, Rich.”

“Any time, Spaghetti.”

Richie hurried back to his house, where they could close the door to his room, and he could put an arm around Eddie’s shoulder, and they could lock out Mrs. Kaspbrak and the kids at school and everything wrong with Derry.

Eddie stayed for dinner, and after Richie’s Mom insisted on the two of them getting to sleep on time – it was a school night, after all, climbed into bed with Richie. Richie began working his hands down Eddie’s torso, towards his pajama bottoms, but Eddie wasn’t in the mood.

“Can we just cuddle, tonight, Rich?”

“Sure, Eds.” Richie wrapped his arms around Eddie’s body and drew Eddie closer to him. “You know your mom’s batshit crazy, right?”

“I may have noticed.”

“So, whatever she said about your dad, she was probably making it up just to fuck with you.”

“I guess.” There was a prolonged silence before Eddie spoke again. “You know, most people like us don’t get along with their parents.”

“What do you remember about your dad?”

“Not much, he was sick for a while before he died. I remember, well, I don’t remember what I did, but I remember I’d hurt myself and I was crying, and he picked me up and told me it was going to be ok, and I believed him. And he used to give me piggy-back rides.”

“Your mom let him?”

“She’d complain, but he’d say ‘Eddie’s a careful boy, he’ll hold on tight,’ and she’d relent. I don’t think she was as bad then. Either he was keeping it in check or something snapped when he died.”

“He sounds like a good dad.”

“Yeah, he was. But, I don’t know, your parents went to college and shit. My dad lived in Derry all his life, so how would he have…?”

“I’m sure he would have come around eventually. Maybe he would have had a hard time with it at first, but if you really love your kid, you’ll figure it out. I’m sure your dad really loved you.”

Richie felt Eddie’s body relax in his arms and eventually he began snoring softly.

When he woke up, Eddie was in a better mood, and he went back to his own house after school the next day. Apparently, Richie’s parents had noticed something.

“Is everything okay between you and Eddie?” his mother asked at dinner. “He seemed a little more tense than usual last night.”

“Everything’s fine between _us.”_

“I’m glad.”

“You’d kill me if I ever broke up with him, wouldn’t you.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, sweetie, but you’re very lucky to have found someone who appreciates your sense of humor.”

“Gee, thanks Mom…it was his Mom.”

“Eddie’s?”

“Yeah, she started using his dad against him. I guess that upset him more than her b.s. usually does.”

As he said that, Richie saw his mother’s mouth grow very, very thin. It was an expression he had only seen once before, after the accidental destruction of a vase Richie hadn’t realized was quite valuable. The next day, she made another report to the welfare office. It wouldn’t matter, as Mayor Devereaux had won reelection with the support of the Legion of Decency, but she at least wanted there to be a record.


	16. The Bathtub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: Includes a suicide attempt

By the Spring of freshman year, it had become clear that things weren’t going great between Bev and Bill. It wasn’t that they didn’t love each other, it was just that Bill’s love for Bev somehow seemed more protective than romantic. Obviously, Bev didn’t have a lot to go on when figuring out what love was supposed to feel like, but she had somehow expected more passion.

On one of the first warm April days, Bev rode her bike out to the Kissing Bridge. She figured she might disturb an amorous couple, but she was unlikely to run into another one of the Losers. Riche and Eddie wouldn’t dare engage in public displays of affection without the rest of the Losers to back them up in case Bowers or similar caught them, and Mike, Stan, and Ben were all single. She was surprised to find Stan looking out over the canal with a weird facial expression, like he was trying to work up his courage for something. Even though she called out his name when she was still a good ways off, it seemed like she startled him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, a little defensively.

“Just came out for a smoke. You?”

“Uh…nothing. How are things with you and Bill?”

“I dunno,” Bev sighed, “sometimes I wonder if we’re going to stay together.”

“Weren’t you guys together in the future you saw?”

“I was married to some asshole.”

“So you didn’t see, like, how we all died or anything?”

Bev had decided that she would never tell Stan or anybody else what she’d seen him do. “Just Eddie. He died fighting it.”

“So, you didn’t see what happened to me?”

“No, why would I want to see that?”

“I dunno, I guess if you know how you were going to die, other stuff would be less scary.”

“Scared of anything in particular?”

Bev had expected Stan to say “It,” but instead he got defensive again.

“No. I should get going.”

Stan jumped on his bike and pedaled off before Bev could formulate a follow-up question. The conversation had unnerved her, and she didn’t sleep well that night. Nevertheless, she dragged herself out of bed the next morning and made her way to Derry High, and the hallway where the Losers hung out before first period. Everyone was waiting for her, except Stan.

“Where’s Stan?” She asked.

“Dunno,” Eddie responded, “must be out sick or something.”

“I saw him last night and he seemed fine.” Physically, at least.

The bell rang and the Losers dispersed to their respective first periods. Except for Bev, who snuck out of the school building and rode her bike to Stan’s house, while trying to put what she’d seen in the deadlights out of her head. The front door was unlocked, but neither Rabbi nor Mrs. Uris was home.

“ _She probably just went to get aspirin or something,”_ Bev told herself, _“because Stan’s just sick with a fever and I’m completely overreacting.”_

She had never been inside the Uris’ home before, and wasn’t familiar with the layout, but she followed the sound of running water upstairs to a locked bathroom door. When jiggling the handle didn’t work, she banged on the door with her fists.

“Stan, are you in there? It’s Bev.”

There was no response, and Bev felt a wave of panic beginning to build in her gut. She pulled a pin from her hair and expertly picked the lock.

The door swung open to reveal the exact scene from the deadlights. The only differences were that the Stanley Uris staring up at her with lifeless eyes from a bathtub overflowing with sickly pink water was 15 rather than 40, and that he was still breathing, just.

Bev ran downstairs to find a phone. By the time she’d dialed 911, all she could do was stammer out the Uris’ address while the operator tried to calm her down until the paramedics walked through the open door. She led them upstairs and averted her eyes as they lifted Stanley out of the bathtub. She ended up following the ambulance in a police car, and getting taken aside to some sort of office in the hospital so they could interrogate her. At least it was a nurse or someone handling the questions, and not Bowers’ dad.

“Why did you go over to Stanley’s house this morning?”

“We had kind of a weird conversation last night, and when I saw that he wasn’t at school, I got worried.” _I should have done something last night,_ Bev thought, _followed him home or called his mother or…something._

“What was the conversation about?”

“He asked if I’d seen how he was going to die.”

“Huh?”

Bev hesitated. Even though it had been on the national news, she still expected people to disbelieve her when she brought up Pennywise.

“Do you remember that clown a couple of years ago who ate all those kids?”

“Your one of the children that killed it?”

“Yes.”

“Was Stanley?”

“Yes.”

The nurse began writing something on a notepad as Bev relayed the conversation they’d had on the bridge, stopping to explain the deadlights and her vision of fighting It in the future. When she’d finished, the nurse looked at her warmly.

“Would you like to call your parents?”

“Um, I live with my aunt. Can I call her?”

The nurse ended up calling Aunt Erm on Bev’s behalf, and explaining that she was at the hospital because she’d called 911 for a friend. Erm burst into the waiting room and wrapped Bev in a tight hug that was surely intended to be reassuring. Instead, it made Bev finally break down.

“It’s all my fault. I thought he was acting weird last night, I should have told someone. I should have told someone about the deadlights.”

“No, it’s not your fault honey. You’re far too young to have to deal with any of this.”

Erm led Bev to the hospital cafeteria and fortified her with coffee before the rest of the Losers got out of school. She had called Ben and Richie’s parents, who drove the five of them to the hospital. They huddled around Bev in the waiting room, looking very scared and very young. Erm didn’t remember being that young when she was their age.


	17. All In His Head

Melinda Strickland had heard about the Derry clown incident, of course. She remembered seeing it on the news, and several times at parties she’d made the mistake of mentioning that she was a Ph.D student in psychology and gotten sucked into conversations with New Age types who were very smug about the government finding incontrovertible proof that the laws of physics could be broken. But she had always thought of it as something abstract, something you see about in the news or read about in a special issue of _Scientific American,_ until she finished her practicum and got a job at Derry Home Hospital.

Several of her patients had lost siblings. _That,_ she was prepared for, grief was actually one of the most common reasons for referral to an adolescent psychologist. What she wasn’t prepared for was Stanley Uris, who had evidently been part of the group of seven kids who’d tracked the monster down into the Derry sewers and finally defeated it, but not before it had physically manifested as each of their worst fears. She was pretty sure that was a recipe for post-traumatic stress disorder. At least she hoped that was what it was; the rambling suicide note Stanley had left referenced dreams about the clown and reliving the experience every time he saw a certain painting in his father’s office. Those were classic PTSD symptoms, but under the circumstances, Dr. Strickland couldn’t be quite sure that they were all in his head. She had sent away to the University of Maine for a second opinion from an expert on the paranormal.

In the meantime, Stanley was sedated and Dr. Strickland was dealing with his parents. They were, of course, very upset, and felt partially responsible for everything.

“I shouldn’t have put so much pressure on him,” Stanley’s father half-whispered, “we didn’t realize he was so fragile.”

Truth be told, Dr. Strickland suspected that the Urises, an Orthodox rabbi and his devoted wife, would have made better parents for another child. A regimented environment with high expectations would help plenty of kids thrive who would have just coasted in a less disciplined home, but the interaction between his father’s demands and his own obsessive-compulsive disorder (that had also come through in the note) must have been hell for Stanley.

“There was no way you could have known. And, with any suicide attempt there are multiple contributing factors. I suspect that a lot of this has to do with what happened two summers ago.”

Mr. Uris stiffened when she referenced the incident, so Dr. Strickland decided to probe. “Can you explain exactly what happened?”

“We weren’t aware of anything until the hospital called. I went down there afterwards…” Mr. Uris explained what he’d seen of the tunnels. It was clear that he was a little shaken by the experience himself. To be honest, Melinda was uncomfortable just hearing about it second-hand.

“Has Stanley ever discussed it with you?”

“No, never. You might want to try Wentworth Tozier or Leroy Hanlon. They were down there with the kids.”

Dr. Strickland explained the recommended treatment plan. When he was released from the hospital, Stanley would take an antidepressant and see Dr. Strickland once a week. They would revise the schedule as he improved, with the eventual goal of just checking in once a year as part of his annual physical. The Urises readily agreed to everything, and Dr. Strickland walked them down the hall to Stanley’s room.

The Losers were huddled around Stan’s bed, waiting for the sedatives to wear off enough for him to talk. He gradually became aware of the straps holding him to the bed, and of his friend’s anxious faces staring down at him. He wasn’t sure what was worse, the conversation he’d had with his parents the last time he woke up, or the conversation he was about to have.

Mike was the first one to notice that Stan was awake.

“Hey, buddy. How are you feeling?”

“Well, apparently I can’t even kill myself right.”

The attempt at humor didn’t go over well; even Richie winced.

“Are you guys totally furious with me?”

“N-no,” Bill stammered; and Stan knew that the return of his stutter was because of him, “just d-don’t scc-cc-frighten us like that again.”

“So…um…has anything changed since I was in the hospital?”

“What do you mean?

“I was the only one it was coming back for. I thought, if I took myself off the board, maybe it would go someplace else.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s in my head somehow, I keep having dreams about it, and every time I walk past that painting…it’s like It’s making me relive it…”

“Stan,” Ben cut in gently, “maybe it’s not Pennywise making you do that. Maybe it’s just your brain.”

“You think I’m going crazy?” Stan sounded hurt.

“No, no, no. It’s just, sometimes when something really scary happens, your brain can kind of get stuck in that moment. It’s what happens to ‘Nam vets.”

“You sure?”

“I looked it up.”

Dr. Strickland, who had walked into the room without any of the kids noticing, cleared her throat. The kids looked up and noticed Stan’s parents behind her, causing each of them to instinctively shrink back.

“Is one of you Richie Tozier?” Dr. Strickland asked.

Eddie pointed, somewhat guiltily, at Richie.

“I’d like to speak with your father, please.”

Richie assumed that he was in trouble. “How come?”

“It might help me work with Stanley if your father could describe what he saw in the sewers.”


	18. Talk to Someone

Wentworth Tozier had been immediately suspicious when the psychologist asked to speak to him, alone out of all the parents. If any of them needed to see a shrink, it was the Denbroughs or Sonia Kaspbrak. Well, Zach and Sharon would benefit from counseling, Sonia would be better off with a restraining order against her son. Still, he couldn’t exactly say no, not with Stanley in the hospital.

“I suppose you’ve heard about what happened to Stanley Uris?” Dr. Strickland asked.

“The whole town’s heard.”

“News travels fast in a small town, I suppose.”

“Except for the news about the demon clown that eats children.”

Dr. Strickland didn’t laugh at the joke. “I was hoping you could describe your experience in a little more detail. It would be helpful to know exactly what Stanley experienced.”

Went sighed, and recounted the whole story again, both what he’d seen directly and what he’d been told afterwards by the kids. It wasn’t a story he particularly enjoyed retelling, especially the part about the deadlights. Dr. Strickland took notes the whole time.

She looked up from her notes when Went had finished. “That certainly sounds like a traumatic experience, and it seems like these kids were already dealing with some trauma. Have any of them seen a therapist to your knowledge?”

“Not that I’m aware.”

“Did anyone suggest to you that Richie see someone?”

Went gritted his teeth. “Our _former_ priest did.”

“And you decided not to pursue counseling?”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Richie.”

“Seeing a therapist doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something wrong with you. When someone’s experienced trauma, especially someone Richie’s age, it can be helpful to work through their experiences with an adult they don’t have a preexisting relationship with.”

 _You could probably use some help yourself,_ Dr. Strickland thought but didn’t say. She wasn’t going to broach that subject until she figured out why Dr. Tozier, and apparently everyone else in this town, was so resistant to the idea of therapy.

“It didn’t have anything to do with the incident.”

“Then why did he want Richie to see a therapist?”

There was a long silence while Dr. Strickland figured out exactly what type of therapy Went was referring to.

“Oh. That’s totally different from what I provide. My goal as a therapist is to work with the patient to help them deal with their emotions, not to change who they are.”

Dr. Tozier relaxed visibly.

“If you ever think that Richie could use some help,” Dr. Strickland assured him, “You can set up an appointment with me.”

“Thanks, I’ll discuss it with my wife.”

Maggie was initially reluctant, but after what had happened to Stanley, she couldn’t risk something similar happening to her son. Richie was less persuadable.

“I’m not fu…I’m not crazy, Mom.”

“I’m not saying you are.”

“Then why do you want me to see a shrink?”

“I just want to make sure everything’s okay.”

“I’m fine! Jeez, why are you always on my case all of the sudden?”

“Because I’m worried about you. How do you think I would feel if something happened to you?”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“Look what happened to Stan.”

“I’m not going to do that. Why would you even say that?”

“Richie, please.”

In the end, parental authority won out over Richie’s objections, and he found himself sitting on the other side of Dr. Strickland’s desk, providing a humorous (to him) explanation of the clown encounter.

Dr. Strickland patiently waited for him to finish his story, then asked him a question.

“Do you ever think that sometimes you make a joke out of something because it makes you feel uncomfortable?”


	19. They Don't Write 'Em Like That Anymore

That summer, the Losers Club started getting invited to parties for the first time. They had discovered pot a year or so before the rest of their grade, and Richie had surreptitiously taught himself to make brownies so that Eddie could join in the fun without triggering his asthma. Once the other kids caught up to them, it didn’t matter that they were Losers. All that mattered was that they knew where to score.

The first part of the summer passed in a blur of drunken house parties and joyrides to Bar Harbor. Bev could see the other couples, the way they stayed so close it seemed like their bodies melted into one another, the way they raked their eyes over one another, even the way they abandoned their other friends to sneak off to a bedroom or the back seat of a car. It was never like that with Bill and Bev. They were more like really good friends who happened to be having sex, and even that seemed less exciting than what other girls described to her once booze or weed had lowered their inhibitions enough to confide in the former outcast.

She finally confronted Bill as he walked her back home after seeing _Point Break_ at the Aladdin.

“Do you feel like the spark’s gone out of our relationship?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just look at other couples our age and it seems like they’re more in love than we are.”

“I love you, Bev.”

“I know, but are you in love with me?”

“W-what do you mean?”

“The poem?

“I d-don’t remember writing you a poem.”

Bev tried to jog his memory. “Your hair is winter fire, January embers, my heart burns there too.”

Bill stared back at her blankly “B-bev I didn’t write that.”

“What do you mean you didn’t write it?” For a brief moment, Bev was terrified that this was what she’d seen in the deadlights – Pennywise making them forget things until eventually they didn’t even remember each other.

“Are you sure it w-w-wasn’t someone else?”

That would make much more sense. She had no reason to assume that Bill had written the poem other than that he had obviously been interested in her. It could just as well have been somebody playing a prank.

“Shit, Bill.”

“I’m sorry, I d-didn’t mean to –“

“It’s not your fault. I guess I should have told you instead of just assuming you wrote it.”

“So, are we still…?”

“I don’t know. God, I was so stupid.”

Bev started crying, and Bill put a comforting arm around her shoulder. It was definitely the gesture of a friend, not a lover. But Bev knew she never wanted Bill to stop being her friend.


	20. Derry Days

Before Bev knew it, it was time for Derry Days. The Toziers had gone on their annual vacation which meant that Eddie didn’t have anyone to go with. To be honest, Bev wasn’t really excited about the carnival, but Eddie successfully badgered her into it.

The boys met Bev at the bookstore and walked into town. Something felt off to Bev, as though there was something the guys weren’t telling her. Stan noticed it too.

“You know you’re going to have to tell her eventually.”

“Tell me what?”

“Gee, th-thanks Stan.” Bill muttered sarcastically.

“Seriously, what are you guys supposed to tell me?”

Bill sighed. “You know how w-w-w-you and I have kind of been taking a break.”

“Sure.” Nothing had officially been said about that, but Bev figured they might has well have been.

“I kind of m—made out with someone.”

“Oh, I’m not mad, Bill. Unless it was Greta Keene.”

“It was Muh-muh-muh-muh…”

“It was me,” Mike finished the sentence for Bill.

“Oh.” Bev decided she needed a smoke, and retrieved a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her purse. She offered one to Bill, who gratefully accepted it with shaking hands.

“I’m really not mad,” Bev reassured him as she lit it for him.

“You’re n-n-not?”

“To be honest, I knew things weren’t working out. I should have said something, but I didn’t want to hurt our friendship.”

“So we’re still friends?”

“Always.”

Bev smiled when she saw the look of relief spread across Bill’s face. “So, are you guys, like, together?”

“Yeah,” Bill admitted with a longing glance at Mike. Bev had to admit they had chemistry.

Mike wrapped his hand around Bill’s waist until the street started to get crowded. There was no way that they would risk being openly affectionate at the festival, but they stuck pretty close together so that they sat together on all the rides (it actually made things somewhat convenient that Richie wasn’t there, since the Ferris wheel sat two to a car; Bev ended up with Eddie and Ben rode with Stan). Bev was pretty sure that the big stuffed animal Mike won was going to end up in Bill’s room.

At the end of the night, Bill and Mike split from the others and wandered off in the direction of the Hanlon farm. Bev was a little surprised. She would have expected the Denbroughs to be more accepting than Grandpa Hanlon.

“So, does Richie know?” she asked.

“I doubt it,” Eddie responded, “I found out when you did.”

“Really?”

“Same here,” Ben admitted.

Bev turned to Stan. “How come you’re the only one of us who knew about this?”

“Bill’s been spending a lot of time at my place, even when the rest of you guys are busy. He’s barely left me alone since…” Stan’s voice trailed off, and Bev knew what he was thinking of. Involuntarily, her mind went back to the morning she’d found him in the bathtub, and she shuddered.

Ben supplied a more palatable ending to the sentence “Since you got home?”

“Yeah, so, uh, I guess we have to get them to tell Richie now.”

Richie got back the day after the festival ended, bearing several rolls of film from the Toziers’ cruise down the Nile, and a miniature sphinx carving for Eddie. Naturally, he spent his first night back with Eddie, but the next morning, they both rode their bikes to the hideout.

The other Losers were waiting for them.

“Boy, I bet you guys really missed me,” Richie quipped.

“We’ve got something to tell you,” Bill explained, “Mike and I are going out.”

“Really? I never would have guessed. My gaydar must be on the fritz.”

“Well, actually, I’m bi…”

“Phew, then maybe they won’t take away my membership card.”

Bill rolled his eyes.

“But seriously, I’m happy for you guys.”

Richie hugged Bill, and then Mike. Somehow, it turned into a group hug, and the cloud that had hung over the Losers’ Club since the moment Bev picked the lock on the door of Stan’s bathroom finally dissipated.


End file.
